


What About Us

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Teachers, F/M, Kid Fic, Minor Character Death, Prompt Bracket Fic, Public Transportation, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 01:06:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16378466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: “I,” she starts to turn toward him then reconsiders, “I don’t want to… again.” She picks out the words slowly, pausing to take a deep breath and he sighs.“It shouldn’t have been twelve years.”She doesn’t say anything to that. He hadn’t expected her to. It didn’t matter which one of them was worried about what, they weren’t going to fix any of it in the five minutes they had before he had to go and unlock the school doors.____Mac and Will breakup, he hooks up with Nina, twelve years later he's divorced, waiting for a train when Mac shows up. Teacher AU. Kid fic.





	What About Us

**Author's Note:**

> I guess this is what happens when my train gets delayed for four hours.
> 
> Warnings for minor character death and minor language.
> 
> Title borrowed from 'What About Us' (Nayya and Blank B) because when the universe drops a new single into your lap when you're in the middle of searching for a title you don't question it.

He hadn’t wanted to take the call. He’d wanted this to be their weekend, but they’re headed back to the city, the four of them, and he’s running thin on excuses: keeping the girls out of school for a day, taking the day off from work. They wouldn’t call unless they needed to, he knew that, but he still catches Morgan’s eye before he steps away toward a quieter corner of the station. 

It isn’t ideal, but he knows she’ll keep an eye on the younger two, keep them out of too much trouble while he takes a moment to get the highlights, put a plan in place for whatever crisis had come up. He still keeps an eye on them, the three towheaded girls sitting on the end of a bench that spanned a large portion of the room. He keeps an eye on them, watching Maddy in particular as she slides along the empty bench before skipping back to join her sisters and starting again.

She’s a little bored he knows it so he keeps his eye on her. He keeps his eye on her so he sees her, the brunette in the deep green jacket who takes a seat at the end of the bench, head bent toward where Maddy’s stopped to say something to her. 

He keeps his eye on them, the pair, the stranger and his daughter, as he wraps up the call and steps closer intending to try and entice Maddy away, try and get her to sit with the others until their train boards. He keeps an eye on them so when she looks up, glances up, he sees the startled look on her face, sees the way she anxiously tucks her hair out of her face before he realizes that it’s her, that it’s Mac that’s been sitting there with his kids.

“I’m sorry.” She’s on her feet before he’s found words to express his own surprise, his eyebrows lifting at the careful way the words slip out. They’re clear, concise, the way he remembers her being, exact in her willingness to take the blame for her wrongdoing, but she’s shaken he knows that, trying to extricate herself while he stands watching, but Maddy’s still talking, getting upset that her new friend is leaving, making excuses, and Morgan, Morgan who never bothers him is at his elbow asking, “daddy who is that?”

He shakes his head not in reply but to clear it as Morgan steps forward scooping Maddy up despite her protests to slip back behind him again.

“I’ll—” Mac gestures vaguely and he nods, surprised when she offers him a relieved, if fleeting smile before turning and disappearing out the closest door.

*

The train’s packed. He should’ve expected that on a Monday afternoon this time of year. He should’ve known, should’ve bought a seat for Hanna, but he hadn’t, so now he’s stuck with a squirmy toddler on his lap waiting to see if he’ll be left, mercifully, next to the last empty seat on the train.

“Oh,” he recognizes her voice with it’s note of disagreement, “could I—”

“There isn’t another seat, ma’am.” The conductor cuts her off and she sighs standing behind his seat so he doesn’t get a glimpse of her until he gets up to let her slide into the window seat.

“Thank you.”

It’s reflexive he knows that, reflexive in the same way his acknowledgement of it is, automatic in the same way he’s reminded that she prefers the window seat, the sheltered space it provides her as she digs a notebook and a large textbook out of her bag.

They pass the first part of the ride in silence. Anyone watching would assume she was lost in her work. She was busy, but he knows she’s keeping an eye on Hanna, so he doesn’t question it when she pulls out another pad of paper and a pack of highlighters. It’s not the coloring book Hanna would normally demand, but it’s enough to keep her quiet, enough to stop him from having to ask Morgan for his phone back, something he’d prefer not to have to do.

“Blue. Pink. Yellow.” Hanna announces the colors in the sort of background noise he’s grown accustomed to, so it’s not until he gets up to take Maddy to the restroom that he realizes Mac’s been smiling softly at her proclamations.

“Hanna likes green.” He hears Morgan offer as he makes his way back up the train and he looks up from watching Maddy to locate her, not in her seat, but in his. 

Mac doesn’t say anything, but she does acknowledge that Morgan’s spoken to her with a polite smile. It’s her best bet given what she knows of his temper, he knows that, but he also knows that’s not going to stop Morgan. Mac is going to have to say something, but she’s weary of that, trying to get through the ride the same way he is.

“Let her work, Morgan.”

“It’s OK, daddy.”

“Morgan,” he sighs knowing he has to keep his frustration in check. “Get back in your seat, please.”

“Why are you being so mean?” It’s not her typical response; it’s not one he’d expect from any of his girls, but he supposes he is being less reasonable than normal.

“Why don’t you find a new game in the appstore?” He knows she’s too old to buy into that. He knows she’ll see right through the offer, see it for what it is, a bribe, but he knows he’s not in a place to negotiate, not with how difficult he’s finding it not to demand Mac find another seat despite the fact there aren’t any.

There’s nothing wrong with her being around his kids— she’s great with kids, god he hates that he knows that— he’s the one he doesn’t want her anywhere near, but he needs to be an adult which means getting Morgan out of his seat and into her own before she and Mac strike up a conversation. There’s no way he could live through an hour of that.

“She’s a teacher, daddy.” Morgan informs him and he wonders if Mac had said something to that effect, if she’d taken that risk, or if Morgan had reached her own conclusions based on the papers Mac’s been working through.

“I know. Back in your seat.” He reiterates before he realizes he may have slipped up, said too much, but if he had Morgan doesn’t say anything as she gets up and slides into her seat with a put out oomph, Hanna squirming in his lap as he retakes his seat.

*

“McHale.” She wedges the phone between her shoulder and her ear, balancing to pry the strap on her heel into the right spot on her foot.

“Mac, it’s your old friend Nina.”

The line stops her dead and she straightens to pull the phone away from her ear, take a deep breath.

“What can I do for you?”

“You don’t have to sound so disappointed.” Nina assures her offhandedly.

“Can I help you with something?”

“I’m trying to be civil.”

“I wasn’t—” Mac pauses to bite her lip, “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”

This isn’t the conversation she wants to be having, but she knows there’s no way out of it. It’s been a couple of days since she’d seen Will and she wonders if Nina had been waiting for things to settle down or if Will hadn’t said anything, hadn’t let it slip until now.

She knows they’ve been together, Nina and Will, the wedding announcement had been hard to miss, falling as closely as it had to her breakup with Will, piling on to the broken heart that hadn’t yet begun to heal and so it surprises her when Nina says the girls have questions, when Nina says she thinks it’d be better if they asked her, Mac, instead of Will. She can’t disagree, Nina knows that, it doesn’t matter what the girls were asking, it was the fact they were asking, the references to her, the way Will would have to remember, be reminded that she existed, because she knew that still hurt him. She’d seen it on his face, seen his quiet, defensive anger and the way he hadn’t, would never, forgive her.

Lunch doesn’t sound like the best idea. She’s willing to let Nina malign her, publically if she wants although she’s sure Nina could come up with answers on her own, but she’s the one asking and there isn’t much to say but yes, because she owes her that much. She’d hurt Will, was still hurting Will and she knows that can’t be easy to watch, to live with.

The diner’s tucked away in the Village, a bright warm place with a decent kids menu that Morgan’s pouring over as Mac raises a tepid hand in greeting while Nina looks on.

There isn’t much conversation at the start. Nina seems more interested in her teaching qualifications than anything the girls might want to know, but Mac answers anyway, lets the replies slide out smoothly, wrapped in the same language she always uses to explain her rapid rise, her promotion to head teacher that had seemed to come too quickly, the job she loves. She lets the questions, the answers, glide between them until the food arrives, until Morgan slides Maddy’s plate in front of own, knife and fork in hand, until Mac automatically reaches to pull it over, to cut up the food and set it back before Maddy with a smile.

It’s reflexive, automatic, even though it’s been years since she’d stood in a cafeteria full of kids young enough to need that sort of help. She’d left that school after her breakup with Will and she wonders if Nina knows that, if that’s why she’s frowning down at the plate she’s dividing into toddler sized pieces or if it’s something else.

It is something else. It’s the reminder of Will, the fact that they’re all here that draws out the frown, because they’re not together anymore. It’s suddenly clear in the way Morgan says ‘daddy said’ like maybe she shouldn’t, like she knows that isn’t what Nina wants to hear and it isn’t because she’s here, another reminder of Will, of the past they’ve been forced to share.

“We worked together, a long time ago.” Mac agrees because that’s why she’s here, because that’s what she’d told Will in the voicemail she’d left him, calling apologetically, speaking quietly. She’d wanted his permission, wanted him to know, had asked him to call her back if he thought she shouldn’t. She hadn’t heard from him, hadn’t expected to.

She’d deliberated over how to frame her request so he didn’t have to, so he could delete the message and try to forget she’d ever called. She thinks maybe he never would forget, that he can’t, but she hadn’t wanted to show up without asking and now she’s glad she had because Nina’s the kind of quiet upset that Mac understands, that Mac knows means they’re both trying to do the right thing, although Nina and her motives may be less honest than that, she doesn’t know, she has no way of knowing, but she’s here and answering questions, pushing potato salad and a half-eaten sandwich around her plate.

*

He’s the one who calls her, Morgan’s requests growing more frequent, more exasperated until he finally gives in because she never asks for much, never asks for anything like this and he’s run out of options, he’s offered up everyone he can think of but Mac’s the one she wants and so he calls, figures she’ll say no and they can move on but she can’t say no he hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t stopped to consider that until he hears her uncertain yes, the hesitance he knows must be because he’s asking and neither of them could have expected that.

“I met Nina for lunch.” She says it quietly and he sighs because he knows. It’s why he has her number, although that particular detail doesn’t matter now. If she hadn’t called the girls would’ve told him, Morgan in particular had been excited by the prospect, by the mystery he’d thought until they’d come home, until Mac had kept coming up time and again.

He doesn’t know if there’s something about Mac that says ‘not Nina’ or if it’s him, some sort of post-divorce rebellion, or maybe he’s giving her too much credit, maybe she is only curious, intrigued by the one person, the one woman he’s avoided any mention of.

“I can’t leave until four.” She tells him and he runs their nightly schedule through his head, dinner between five thirty and six. He could leave Morgan with Mac, take the other two for a quick bite, but he’s not sure he wants to do that.

“Can you make it up here by four thirty?”

He expects her to say yes, she’d already said yes, but she waits for the address, the clarification before she sounds anything like sure. She’ll be there: four thirty at the cafe around the corner from his apartment.

*

He’s sitting far enough away that he can’t hear what she’s saying, she knows that’s why he’d picked those seats, why he’d told Morgan to sit and wait at the table along the wall, not that Morgan’s mentioned that, not that she’s at all interested in talking about herself. She’s excited about the prospect of the interview, the school project they’re supposed to be completing, her eyes shining as she meets Will’s eyes over Mac’s shoulder before pulling out her notebook and the sheet of questions she’s supposed to ask.

Morgan, MacKenzie Morgan McHale, she watches the way Morgan studies the name, puzzles over it carefully as she writes it across the top of the page.

Does daddy know she wants to know, does he know they share a name, Morgan and Mac?

“I don’t know.” Mac offers up the lie with a bland smile, because she knows he does, is damn sure he does, but she doesn’t mention it because she doesn’t have an explanation, a reason to justify this tie between his daughter and the woman who had broken his heart, but maybe that was what it was, two heartbreakers, heads bent together, maybe that’s what it was. 

She’d puzzled over this for months, tried to forget, but it’d been hard to ignore that tiny flutter of hope, the fleeting wish that it might mean something else, that it could have at one time, although she knows she isn’t here because he wants her to be but because Morgan does, because she can’t contain her curiosity despite the fact she’s obviously trying, trying so hard to emulate the professional decorum she thinks she should have even as the questions spill out of her.

Will would do anything for his kids, even this, playing with fire, fueling the anger she knows he must still feel.

Yes, she says, and no, spells the name of the school, explains her job, lists reading and documentary films as hobbies, talks about the sandwiches she tends to make for lunch. Morgan offers up a bit about herself, tiny tidbits offered shyly, mentions one of the girls at school, mean, Mac assumes by the way Morgan’s gaze slides away, lonely Mac winces to herself when Morgan mentions the school librarian, recess spent amongst the stacks of books and she wonders if Will knows, if Nina does, if this is the source of her fascination, another adult, a stand-in, someone both her parents know, a way for the information to trickle down without judgement. 

She hopes not, hopes the new school year has brought new friends, but she doesn’t ask and it’s hard to tell from what Morgan offers between the questions she’s still asking when Will walks over.

“We have to get going, kiddo.” He says gently, but Morgan still looks disappointed, still looks something closer to gutted when she sets her pen down.

“I have more questions, daddy.”

“You have enough for your paper?” He asks it like a question, but Mac knows it isn’t meant to be, knows it’s meant to be a reminder even as Morgan shrugs and sighs, reluctantly packing up as Mac slips a couple of bills under the salt shaker to cover the coffee she’d had and the sandwich she’d ordered Morgan.

“It was nice talking to you.” She offers Morgan a smile, a bright one, genuine and warm, as open as she dares before she slides from her seat, not quite turning enough to glance toward Will. She doesn’t want to accidentally provoke him not with the kids around. She knows it makes her look flighty, skittish, like she’d rather be anywhere but in a room with him, but she can’t help that, can’t help the way she turns to glance back as she pulls the door open, stopping to take in the set of his shoulders as he bends to scoop up Hanna and take Morgan’s bag before slinging his arm around her shoulder.

*

His resume shows up on her desk as fall pushes into winter, the wind buffeting her office window bitter and cold. He’s applying for an opening at the middle school. It’s not a posting directly under her purview, but they do share a campus, the two building sitting adjacent to one another on the same lot, but there’s a chance they’d run into each other. She wonders if he knows that, wonders if he knows she’s been combing through the applicants hoping to find someone to fill their vacancy, the interim principal already tired of filling both postings.

“That’s not the job I applied for.” He reminds her when she tells him she’s calling about his application and she has to explain, they need a Vice Principal at the middle school, that’s true, but he’s more than qualified to skip the intermediate step and run the place himself, that’s the posting she’s calling about, if he’s interested, if he thinks he can stand seeing her every day, although she doesn’t mention that, not in that way, not with those words. They’d be working together again, she does mention that, but she’s careful to temper it, to remind him that’s why a good word from her is so important, so if he’s interested, if he wants, she wouldn’t mind saying something.

The pay was better, the hours and the perks would be the same though, he could bring Morgan in with him in the morning and the other girls could be enrolled in the affiliated elementary school, the pre-K program if he was interested, if that was something he wanted.

He isn’t sure. He sounds too surprised to be sure of anything. He hadn’t been expecting this, hadn’t considered it but he’s not writing her off, not dismissing the idea, so she offers him some time, tells him he can call her office and let her know. She gives him her number and waits.

*

When he calls back it isn’t about the job, not the first time. Morgan needs someone for her school’s career day. He’d offered to go but Morgan hadn’t been interested in that. You went last year, that’s what Will says she’d said although Mac has a feeling there’s more to it than that, a reason Nina hadn’t been offered or volunteered, but she doesn’t ask about that, only asks for more details, a date and the time, that sort of thing: one afternoon next week, a couple of hours, maybe less if she really couldn’t get away. He’d appreciate it, that’s what he says, not in a way that’s meant to be manipulative, but in an honest way, in a way that makes him sound tired, in a way that says he wants to do this for his kid and so she agrees, says yes before she stops to consider she might want to say no, might want to put a stop to this before Morgan ends up getting torn between the two of them, because she isn’t sure either of them can guarantee that won’t happen, even if she knows that’s why Will sounds a little weary.

*

Yes. He calls back a couple of days later, leaves her a message while she’s out on the playground telling off a couple of boys for harassing one of the younger kids. She’ll have to stay late to give them detention, but it’ll give her a chance to talk to the rest of the staff, bring Will up and offer to set up an interview or two.

*

She’s always known him to be polite, to be more patient than he feels, but she’s still surprised by how unphased he is to see her, by how even his smile is, by how warm his handshake is. He’d said he wouldn’t mind seeing her, but she hadn’t quite believed him, still doesn’t quite believe him as he answers questions, asks a few himself as they make their way around the school.

They all like him. They’re pleased that she’d found him, so she doesn’t think twice about extending the offer, offering him the position, asking him to come back to her if only in this small way.

*

It’s the job he’s been working toward for years. He liked teaching but he’d always preferred the bigger picture, so he hadn’t hesitated as much as he thought he would when she’d been the one to call to suggest he apply for the principal position at the school, at the well-funded elite private school he’d sent an application into on a whim. He hadn’t expected to hear back from them, hadn’t expected to hear back from her although he’d known, and then it seems forgotten, that she worked there, but even that hadn’t been as much of an issue as he’d thought it might be, because he still trusted her professionally, still trusted her enough in that regard that he knew he could do his job, that they could both do their jobs without getting tied up in the wreckage from their past. Even if something came up, it would inevitably he knew that, he’d had a lot of practice in dealing with that, in dealing with Nina who was a lot less patient and much more vindictive than Mac would ever be, because Mac hadn’t been the one he’d hurt. He wasn’t the one making amends. He could live with that he’d decided and taken the job.

Morgan was a upset, angry not about the job, but about the fact that they won’t be spending the week between Christmas and New Years together because he’d be at the school pulling his office together, trying to put plans into place, structures and schedules, for when school started up again, before they spend a few weeks hurtling toward winter break at the end of the month.

He ends up bringing her along, bringing Maddy along on a couple of mornings, leaving them in the library, only to inevitably, by the end of the afternoon, find Morgan in Mac’s office curled up on the loveseat tucked under the window, or in the chair in the corner with a book or a notebook, a copy of the school paper, or a chain of imperfect paper dolls, Mac with her glasses on silent and working, unbothered by the unexpected addition to her staff.

“She files you know.” He says one afternoon toward the end of the week and he watches both their heads pop up, Morgan’s smile more teasing than Mac’s.

He doesn’t normally say much outside of what the job requires, he’s still getting used to the feel of her in the room, the way her presence feels different, feels the same as it always had. He doesn’t normally say much but he’s been trying when Morgan’s around, when any interaction between the three of them makes her smile the way that it does.

“Children under the age of sixteen are exempt from hard labor over the winter holidays.” Mac’s smile turns up a bit more at the corners and he shakes his head at her.

“If the filing cabinet drawers are that heavy—”

“The requisition form will be on your desk first thing tomorrow.”

“Sass.” He sighs and Morgan laughs, laughs that giggle of hers that he hasn’t heard in months and he stops to smile himself, lets himself soak up the sound while he can.

“Sometimes he’s funny.” Mac agrees and Morgan laughs again before getting up from her seat on the sofa to wrap her arms around him.

“I like your new job, daddy.” She says and he tousels her hair, smiles down at her.

“Me too.”

*

She won’t go back to school. He should have seen this coming, with the fuss she’d made about saying at Nina’s, with the fuss over spending the days at the school with him, with the time she’d been spending with Mac he shouldn’t be surprised that she’s crying, begging him now not to make her go, but she has to. She can’t stay home when he needs to go to work. He’s tried to explain that to her, tried to remind her that she knows that, but she isn’t listening.

“Don’t make me, daddy, please.” She drags the words out, raises her voice when he ignores her and he feels his self-control start to fray a bit.

He wasn’t going to argue with her. She knew that. He’d never tolerated that sort of behavior, but she is upset, refusing to cooperate and it’s beginning to rub off on the younger two, Hanna’s quiet pouting quickly turning into a thin wailing.

“Tell her I have to go to work.” He doesn’t bother with much of a preamble, doesn’t explain as he hands the phone to Morgan when Mac picks up, leaving her in the living room so he can get Hanna dressed and find Maddy a pair of shoes.

“They hate me.” He hears the protest, loud and pained, but he doesn’t turn back to ask for context, doesn’t play into whatever ploy Morgan think she’s toying with.

He has lunch boxes packed, homework checked, but it’s still later than he wants when he reappears with Morgan’s coat, gloves and hat zipped into the pockets. “Let’s go.”

She’s still crying, but she’s resigned now, silent as she shrugs on the coat and shoves her feet into the new boots Nina had bought her for Christmas, they were expensive, ugly for kids shoes, but even that doesn’t raise a protest.

“I’ll pick you up after school.” He promises at the school gate, but he doesn’t get a response, already she’s disappearing inside, shoulders slumped, silent.

*

“They— what?” He says in a voice he knows says he’s pissed, in a voice he shouldn’t be using even at this volume in her office, especially not on his first official day of work.

“I don’t think it’s malicious. They sound more disinterested than anything.” Mac says like he hadn’t just demanded she repeat herself.

“They’re bullying her.”

Mac blows out a stream of air that rustles her bangs in response to his proclamation. “She says they don’t like her. She’s lonely.”

“She said that?”

“She said she thinks they don’t like her.”

“She’s lonely.”

“She doesn’t have anyone at school she can talk to. Anyone her age.” She amends when he opens his mouth to argue. “You know how important that—”

“Why the—”

“Will.” Mac warns him softly and he sighs, shifts in agitation.

“She never said anything.”

“You have a lot—”

“That’s bull—”

“Will.”

He sits when she points and he watches her pull her hand back as he settles into the chair. He hadn’t seen her reach for him, he’d missed that, but he doesn’t miss the way she deliberately curls her fingers back, pulling them away.

“She’s confused, about a lot of things. She’s at that age where she’s trying to figure things out. Trying to figure you out, and Nina, and that’s complicated enough for any kid.”

“But we’re divorced. Nina’s always been bitter and now I am too, distracted with the new job, and you showed up.” He frowns at her, not as annoyed as the look might suggest, but aching with the thought that he’d missed this, that he hadn’t know how badly his own child was hurting.

“Talk to her tonight.” Mac suggests gently. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but it can’t hurt. She wants to talk to you, she just hasn’t figured out how. You’re going to have to give her time.”

*

It takes two weeks, but he’s back to picking Morgan up from Mac’s office in the afternoon. Most of the time Mac isn’t there, she’s still working, supervising a detention or an after school session, but Morgan’s always there with her homework spread out, smiling when he asks her what she wants to do in the couple of minutes they have before they have to pick up the rest of the gang.

He’s still not sure transferring schools in the middle of the year was the best idea, especially not when he knows the other kids must have automatically assumed she was a bit of a teacher's’ pet, with her dad a principal at the big school, but no one seems to be making a big deal about it, possibly because he is the principal, and she seems happy, happier at least than she had been and he can’t ask for more than that.

“I don’t get it.”

There’s something in the proclamation, the way Morgan puts the words together that makes him stop just shy of the door to listen, listen to the quiet murmur of Mac’s voice as she pulls the main points from the text. It sounds like a history lesson, something he would’ve thought Morgan already knew, but the accompanying commentary was nuanced in a way he hadn’t expected.

It’s not the first time he’s heard either of them talk about colonialism. He’d been explaining that to Morgan since she’d started school and he’d had to explain away the picture-perfect imagining of the pilgrims and Columbus and the ensuing smattering of American heroes, but this wasn’t that. There was an element of compassion, a uneasy recognition of current events that overlaid their conversation.

“Egypt?” Morgan poses the question as he knocks on the door and Mac’s still smiling as she raises her head, looking up toward where he’s standing. He’s expecting the look to fade, he’s expecting her usual somewhat bland expression, the one that still slips toward ‘I’m sorry’ when she thinks they’re alone, but it isn’t there, not now, not today, and for the moment she’s still smiling, pleased with Morgan he knows, but it’s still nice to see her smile, nice to know he’s responsible in a way for the fact the smile’s there.

“Daddy, do you think Egypt will be free?” Morgan asks like she knows it’s a complicated question even if he knows she doesn’t understand why, not completely, and he wonders if Mac’s responsible for that too, for this curiosity. Morgan’s always been curious, but she’d never pushed past the confines of the conversation they’d been having, conversations they’ve had. He doesn’t, as a rule, discuss the news with his kids, although he supposes Morgan’s old enough, old enough now that she should know he would if it came up, if he needed to, but he finds himself stumbling over the question, trying to decide what free means, what hope means, if his hoping so would mean anything, if it mattered, if it should matter. 

He doesn’t know the answer to the question. He could tell her that, tell her he isn’t sure anyone knows. That would be the truth, but Mac’s smile hasn’t faded and he knows what she would say, what she will say if he doesn’t answer, if Morgan asks her instead.

“I hope so.” He sighs a little after he says it, pulls up a smile at the way Mac’s eyes crinkle in the corners when he does. “I really hope so.”

*

She’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d spent years holding onto a hope she knew wasn’t hers to claim, and several years after that desperately clinging to something that looked more like a plea for forgiveness than anything else. Even since then, it’s been years, years since she’d thought they might end up in a room together, once. Once. She’d never considered more than once, had never considered what she might say beyond that, had never considered all the things she still hasn’t said because there have been so many other things to say.

They’ve said so much, but she’s still waiting, wondering when it’ll happen, because she’d never imagined this, never could have dreamed this. She’d seen him smile, had smiled somewhat unintentionally at the joke he had made, at the thing he had said and he hadn’t seemed to mind, hadn’t minded the fact that she in some way seemed happy. He seemed happy too, although that felt different to her, felt more tentative, so much of him predicated on a worry she hadn’t expected, and maybe that’s what makes her ask, what makes her wonder a little to loudly.

“Do you still hate me?” It slips out at a whisper but even then she wants to take it back, wants to pretend like it’d been the TV or her phone or anything but her own mouth that had formed the words and spat them out because he’s looking at her with a curious look, a strange look not one of actual unknowing wonder, and she knows she shouldn’t have said anything.

“I’m sorry.” She shakes her head, trying to take it back even though she knows it’s much too late for that, even though she knows he’s never heard half the apologies she’s offered.

“I never,” he shakes his head too, “I never hated you.”

She bites her lip, wanting to argue, wanting to tell him she’d seen it in his eyes when she’d told him about Brian, the hurt and betrayal, the seething anger. She’d been standing in his living room much like she was now, but then she’d been waiting for his response, knowing, she thought, what it would be. Now, time had taught her not to be so sure.

“Will.” She swallows his name and she sees him move out of the corner of her eye, knowing he must be looking at her, but she doesn’t glance over. She should, she should do that for him, but she can’t.

“I’ll— I—” she bites her lip. “I should get going.”

“I don’t hate you. I never,” he says again and then stops, sets a new resolve behind the words. “Mac.”

Look at me this new tone of voice says. She’s heard it from him before, directed elsewhere, but even then she hadn’t denied him, she hadn’t denied him, but now.

“It’s all right.” He says, softer now and she presses her eyes shut, raises her face towards his and forces herself to open her eyes.

It’s painful knowing what she might see, but none of that is there, which somehow hurts more and he must know that, must sense it somehow because he’s being careful, careful in a way that isn’t particularly gentle, but it isn’t unfeeling either.

“Mac,” he says again softer. “I was angry. I can’t lie about that but I never— I know Nina’s not the most reliable source but she’d tell you the same, god,” he sighs, “for a long time she hated me for it, for not hating you, for not loving, for not— it was a long ten years.”

He settles on that and she nods, accepting that at least. “OK.”

“All right. Stay a while? I know the girls are asleep, but,” he tips his head back toward the kitchen, toward the light he’d left on and she nods despite her hesitance.

“All right.”

*

He doesn’t know how it had started, the afternoons in Mac’s office that had stretched into afternoons at his places and then once, twice, into dinner. She’d always left right after that, after the table had been cleared and most of Morgan’s homework had been done. She’d left and gone home and he hadn’t thought to ask her to stay, not until she hadn’t been able to drag her eyes up from his carpet.

She and Morgan had been talking about Nina. It’d taken him a week to figure that out, longer still to realize what it was, what she must have been thinking, the cyclical aching they all seemed to share, the four of them.

“No.” Morgan says again and he sighs, tries again.

“Charlie’s is next weekend.” He knows she knows that, knows that isn’t what they’re arguing about, but he doesn’t have a better explanation, can’t begin to fathom what it might be they’re actually disagreeing about, and he doesn’t have the time to call and play twenty questions with Mac hoping for an answer.

She’d promised Morgan would talk to him, would find a way to talk to him, but he was still waiting for that, still waiting for an end to the arguments that were occurring more frequently as time went on.

“I’m not going.”

“Your mother’s going to be downstairs waiting in less than two minutes.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’d better start caring.”

“Or what?” Morgan demands but he lets the challenge go, tries to see this from her perspective, because seeing things from his isn’t getting them anywhere.

“Why don’t you want to go?”

He isn’t expecting an answer, not a real one, they’re both too agitated for that, but he does want to know, needs to know if he has any hope of ending the standoff without an ultimatum and she seems to sense that because he sees her reconsider, the quivering in her bottom lip starting up again.

“I don’t want to, daddy.” She says less angry, more heartbroken and he feels his stomach drop.

“I’m sorry.” He says and he is, but he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do about that, if he’s supposed to do anything. “We can hang out when you get back.”

He’s not sure that’s what it is, that that’s what the problem is, that that’ll fix anything, but it’s the closest thing he has to an answer, his only shot in the dark, and it seems to help a bit, seems to smooth things over enough that she nods, resigned he notices but she isn’t arguing, doesn’t argue as he bundles the three girls into the stairwell and down to the lobby.

*

“I hate her.” Morgan’s yelling and he’s trying to ignore her, trying to ignore the way his temper flares with every unprovoked shriek.

She’s mad, furious in the way he’s used to Hanna being, toddler temper tantrum turned into something much worse because this isn’t about an ice cream cone or a toy she’s not allowed to have it’s about her mother and a little bit about him he assumes and he hates that.

“I didn’t do anything.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s already decided not to say anything in response to the way she’s yelling, not that he has enough details to say something if he wanted to. He has her phone. He’d insisted Nina give it to him when she’d demanded he come pick up Morgan, but he doesn’t know what the issue is, doesn’t know what the phone has to do with it, but he knows she’s not allowed to have it back until tomorrow afternoon so he figures he has more than enough time to figure it out.

He unlocks the door to the apartment and she disappears inside. He waits for the sound of a slamming door, of some sort of retribution, but the apartment’s silent so he settles on the couch with a sigh and thumbs through her phone, browser history and contacts, scrolls through her text messages, scrolls past the six unread messages from Mac and calls her on his phone instead.

“When you get a minute.” He tells her quickly following with a “everything’s fine,” when he hears the worry in her voice.

Everything was fine, although Mac doesn’t look convinced of that when she steps past him toward the kitchen, lingering as he steps up behind her. It’s been months since she’d been this uncomfortable here so he waits, lets her hesitate, move cautiously through the space until she’s standing uneasily by the sink in the kitchen, fiddling with the cup he’d left there when Nina had called.

“Mac?”

She turns back toward him a little startled that he’d spoken, that it’d been her name he’d said he realizes as she glances up at him.

“Do you know what happened?”

“What?”

Whatever she’d been thinking about it hadn’t been this, him, she’d been lost somewhere else he can see that, can see her trying to sort back through the last half hour, pick things up from where they’d started with his call.

“Is Morgan okay?”

“She’s fine. Decompressing.” He offers her a smile trying to reassure her, trying to settle his own unease at how reluctant she still seems to feel being here.

“I’ve been texting her, since school let out yesterday. I should’ve stopped. I know it pisses Nina off.”

That’s news to him, but he lets it pass. “You did stop.”

“After she stopped responding. I thought—” she sighs. “Did Nina?”

“It’s all right.” He assures her even though he’s not entirely sure what she’s asking. “Those two have always been,” he shrugs and stops when Mac turns away, back to the cup, to the fiddling.

She blaming herself. He's seen this from her before, but it's been so long since he'd considered the possibility, so long since he'd considered that she might still harbor that particular inclination that he wonders how long he's been missing the signs, wonders if she'll be able to talk him around to her way of thinking.

“I don't think this has anything to do with you.”

“You don't.”

At any other time he would have taken that as a challenge because it isn't a question, but she isn't baiting him; she doesn't believe him and she doesn't particularly care why she doesn't or why he disagrees with her.

“You haven't been—” He starts but she cuts him off, sharp but not angry.

“That's the fucking point isn't it?”

“I didn't ask you over here to berate you.”

“You wouldn't dream of that.” She sighs and turns away, takes a couple of steps and pauses by the door. “Sorry.”

He can see the contours of the conversation now, the old arguments that had worn grooves into his memory and he can see what she means, see what she's expecting.

“I'm haven't read the messages. I don't care about,” he scrubs a hand over his face considering. “She talks to you more than she talks to me. I thought you might— I don't want to make things worse. I don't know where to start.”

“She,” she considers with her bottom lip drawn in. Whatever she wants to say, whatever she thinks he doesn’t want to hear is upsetting her, the kind of upset that years ago used to mean tears, he still recognizes the signs, but she’s more careful now, less volatile. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know.” He has to stop himself from continuing, from asking her if she thinks it’s hers, stop himself from telling her he knows she thinks it’s her fault. “I’m not interested in blaming anyone.”

“Nina isn’t happy that I’ve been hanging around.”

He isn’t sure that’s true. There were lots of things that upset Nina, Mac had never been one of them. He’d always taken the blame for that, for his unwillingness, his inability to love Nina the way she wanted him to, to love her in any way.

It’d been necessity, responsibility that had kept them together. It’s why they have moved from three to four and then so rapidly to five. He loved the girls. Nina wanted him to love her for that, love her for giving them to him, but it didn’t work that way, even without Mac it never would have worked that way. They’d been doomed from the start, he’d known that, it’s why he’d picked her, picked her so quickly. He had wanted to be the one to end it, even after ten years that hadn’t worked out.

“I don’t think—”

“I took you away from her.”

“I did that myself. Mac,” he protests before she can interrupt him again, “this isn’t.”

“She’s taking it out on Morgan. Morgan thinks—”

He raises his eyebrows as she glances over, imploring, looking for something, and she falls silent for a moment watching him.

“I tried to explain.” Her voice is softer now, trying to hide the ache he can hear beneath the words. “I told her that I did something bad, that I hurt you, that it made you sad. It made you sad and made Nina angry, angry and sad and that it wasn’t her fault.”

She looks at him again, still imploring, still wanting, he realizes, someone to believe her, to make things simple, to blame her instead of time and circumstance and a hundred other things.

“She adores you.” There’s nothing he’s more sure of and Mac seems to know that, seems reassured by his resolve. “She’s not going to blame you. You haven’t done anything. You showed up and— no,” he cuts himself off to shake his head at her, soft and careful in a way that surprises him. “Things fell apart long before you showed up.”

“I should’ve never.”

“Never what?” He waits to see which way she goes: Brian or Nina, last year or this week, but she doesn’t answer. Instead she asks a question of her own.

“Why?”

“Why what?” He asks but she only shrugs this time, only moves toward the table and back again.

“It isn’t her fault.”

“I know.” He knows she must mean Morgan, Mac’s never cared much for Nina, but the conversation’s shifting back and forth too quickly for him to know what she means for sure.

“I was texting her. Photos from,” she gestures toward him vaguely and he pulls Morgan’s phone from his pocket, waits a moment then opens the thread, scrolls through the texts Mac had been sending.

Madeline. He recognizes the drawings instantly, the muted colors. He had Morgan had read them together while Nina had been pregnant with Maddy. It’d been a bit of a joke on his part, by then Morgan had been a little old for the books, but she’d loved them, the time they’d spent together, just the two of them.

“Fuck.” He sighs, setting the phone down on the counter beside where Mac is standing. “You kept telling me she was lonely.”

“It’s not your—” he lays his hand on her arm to stop her. He doesn’t want to hear the excuses, the new job, single parenthood, the younger girls, the body’s need for sleep.

“You were trying to remind her.”

“I told her you could, the two of you, could, read, something again, that you’d find the time, but,”

“She didn’t want to bother me.” He bites back another curse and Nina’s name. Nina loved the girls, he knew that, but she’d never really had the time, never taken the time. He’d been okay with tha, when he’d been there, when he could watch them, let Morgan have time to be a kid as serious as she could be, but he knew it wasn’t like that anymore, knew she spent a lot of her weekend watching the younger two, helping out because while Nina tried, she could try for two days a week, it wasn’t quite enough and Morgan would always step in, step up, she always had.

Mac had seen it. Mac had seen it from the start. That’s what had kept her close, had made her skirt that line, walk the edge of the invisible abyss he knew she was still convinced existed. 

He hadn’t seen it. He’d been too blinded by time and habit and responsibility to want to see it, to take the time to see it and so he’s grateful, as grateful as he is heartbroken that Mac had seen it, that she’d been trying to help, been helping. There’s no way he can thank her for that, not in a way that would mean what it needed to.

“Mac,” he breathes out in what she must think is a sigh, because she doesn’t look up. “I’ll do better. Talk to Nina, maybe we could spend a couple of weekends together the two of us, read the entire series. I know it’s not— but it’s a start.”

“Yeah.” He smiles when she smiles, smiles even though hers looks a little sad. “She’d love that.”

*

There’s a barbeque, an end of summer thing at Charlie’s they’re both invited to. They’re both invited and Mac’s trying to back out, quietly in the way that she does, with the excuses that sound more like honesty than invented reality, but he’d seen how excited she’d looked by the idea, a reminder of the good old days, the heyday when the whole gang had worked together, but it was his weekend with Morgan, the one weekend a month they spent together and she wouldn’t want to interfere with that.

“You have to come.” She seems to think it’s token protest so he repeats himself more firmly, repeats himself with a look that says he isn’t joking in the slightest and she sighs and mumbles something about Steven, her brother, and her sister, one of them and then another, but she nods when he offers to meet her at the station on Saturday.

*

It’s raining, just a little, a fine drizzle, by the time he and Morgan show up, but Mac’s already there dry umbrealla tucked next to her on the bench, book open on her lap.

“What’s that, an encyclopedia?” He teases and she looks up, lifts the cover so he can see the gold gilt. “Auction catalog. Expensive.”

“Nancy asked me to pick it up for her.”

“Is that what won you over?” He’s teasing still, but she glances away for a moment and sighs.

“It’s a couple of extra stops up the line,” he reminds her in case that helps, in case knowing she doesn’t have to stay will stop the guilt she’s struggling to hide.

“I was going to catch the earlier train, meet you later.”

“Yeah?” He sits next to her when Morgan wanders off to check the schedule lit up by the door.

“I should—”

“You should come. She’s going to get spoiled, by me, by you and Charlie and Nancy and—”

“OK.”

“Yeah?”

She nods, still considering the book on her lap.

“I wouldn’t ask you to come if we didn’t want you there, with both of us.” He adds in case she’d missed that part. “It’ll be fun.”

*

Morgan isn’t particularly interested in him when they get to Charlie’s. She’s more interested in Nancy’s latest kitchen gadget, in Beau’s new guitar, in Don’s ridiculous jokes, but he’d been expecting that, anticipating it, so when she runs off, when she disappears into the house he falls into the closest chair and groans, holds out a hand when Sloan walks by hoping she’ll shove a drink in it.

“You have feet.” She reminds him placidly, bumping rather deliberately into Mac who’s still watching the door Morgan had disappeared through. “Hey smiley.”

“What?” Mac turns toward Sloan, confused.

“I thought we were celebrating.”

“Oh,” Mac catches on, the smile she draws up looking more like transitory amusement than happiness, but it’s enough to appease Sloan who disappears into the house only to reappear with Don and several trays of food.

It’s their usual thing, food and drink, jokes and teasing, with the kids in and out of the house raising a racket from time to time.

He’d gotten up to try and find some ice partway through a conversation with Don, and he’d stopped on this way through the dining room. He’d spotted Mac with Morgan, the two of them curled together standing by the corner of the house watching the party, Mac occasionally pressing closer to say something.

She can’t see him, she’s turned away from the window, but he wishes that he could catch her eye, raise his hand and nod, thank her in that small way for this moment, for the closeness Morgan’s never had with Nina, both of them resenting the other from the beginning as toddler had become pre-schooler, then grade-schooler, suddenly a sibling to one then two, no longer the sole focus of his adoration. It’d been harder for them all than he’d realized.

Now that her presence had lost its sting, Mac had become a balm of sorts in a way he hadn’t expected. Even Nina seemed to, begrudgingly, appreciate that, if the emails he knew she traded with Mac were any indication. They weren’t personal Mac had told him, but that didn’t seem to matter. Nina wasn’t furious with Mac in the way he’d eventually expected her to be.

“They look cute together.” He turns toward Sloan’s knowing smile with a sigh at the interruption. “You should tell her that.”

“Yeah.” He knows better than to solicit any further commentary on the subject. “Don wants to start the ice cream?”

Sloan shrugs, gaze unrelenting, but he ignores the look and its implications.

“Nancy mentioned something about neon sprinkles in the sideboard.”

“Second drawer.” Sloan agrees. “She won’t wait forever.”

He knows she means Mac, means he needs to get his act together, but he punts, deflects: there isn’t anything he can say, anything else he can do now, not today. “I’ll grab the stuff out of the fridge if you can manage the rest.”

*

He isn’t sure what it is, what it was that had made Morgan so mad, mad in a way that had made her insist she was fine in a sulking pouting tone he hadn’t heard in months.

It wasn’t anything, that’s what she’d said but he wasn’t buying it, not for a second.

“She didn’t want to see you either.” He looks up from Mac’s desk to peer around the room again in case he’d somehow missed Morgan, but her blonde head is nowhere in sight.

“She went down to the cafeteria. I dug out some change so she could have breakfast.”

“She already ate.” He takes the seat across from her, falling into the worn leather chair it as she sighs in response.

“She likes the cereal.”

“With chocolate milk.” He holds off on the criticism he would normally offer about that particular dietary choice. “She’s mad at you too.”

Mac doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t need to, he knows breakfast is her way of apologizing, but he wished that she would. “What happened?”

“She wanted me to come over,” she looks up, sets aside her glasses with a hesitance he isn’t used to seeing from her. “Last night.”

“You were in Connecticut.”

“Later.”

“After she was in bed?”

Mac sighs glancing at him, reluctant, he realizes, to have this conversation.

“What happened?” He asks more softly, more patiently and Mac shakes her head, not dismissively, but thoughtfully.

“She called me. You were in bed.” She doesn’t offer a more specific time and he doesn’t ask. “She wanted me to come over. I told her I couldn’t. I told her I’d see her this morning.”

There was a lot more to the story than that, he knew there had to be, for starters he’d gotten involved somehow, gotten blamed for something although he can’t imagine what.

“You’ve told her no before.”

“When I was out of town or at a fundraiser.”

“It was the middle of the night.”

“Yeah.” So, she means to say. That wouldn’t matter to her any more than it would matter to Morgan, Mac was prone to jumping through hoops, she would’ve needed a better excuse than that.

“And?”

“I can’t just show up at your apartment.”

“You can’t?” She never had, but he’d never stopped to consider that she wouldn’t, that after all this time she wouldn’t just stop in if she were in the neighborhood, if Morgan asked.

“It was the middle of the night. You were sleeping.”

“You didn’t have permission.”

“Yeah.” She coopts his offered excuse with a small smile.

“You could have asked.”

“Will.”

“I’m serious and you know it.” He pauses to watch her, considers. “You know I hardly ever tell them no. What’s this really about?”

She looks away, looks down and then past him, at the clock then at the door. They had to start their day in a moment, but they had time, too much time for her to find a way to use that as an out. He could give her one, settle for whatever sliver of the truth she’s about to offer him, but he has no real interest in that. He’s curious, intrigued by whatever it is that’s making her so uneasy, so apologetic.

“It was the middle of the night.”

“And you’re telling me Morgan went for that without busting down my bedroom door to tell me to change your mind?” Mac had clearly forgotten about that, Morgan’s stubborn streak, and he wonders how.

“I told her not to wake you up.”

“And she listened?” He doesn’t doubt Morgan would, Mac had the magical gift of not being the parent, the extra leeway when arguing that allowed for a somewhat more logical, less emotional conversation, but even so he knows she must have offered Morgan something, said something that had allowed her to resign herself to what had clearly been shaping up to be a miserable Monday morning.

“Yeah.”

“All right.” He shifts a bit, leaning forward to settle his weight on his feet, but he doesn’t get up. “When I talk to Morgan about this later—”

He stops when Mac scrapes her chair back. “Yes, Will.”

He’s being dismissed, he understands that, but he also knows she’s deflecting, not outright, she hasn’t found something else to occupy her, but she’s not happy with where the conversation’s going and she doesn’t mind if he knows it.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“MacKenzie.” He stands as she steps toward the bookcase behind him and he sees her flinch.

“It’s easier if you spit it out.” He reminds her, voice softening as she moves past him.

“She wanted to give me her key.”

She’s not looking at him, shoulders slumping into a shrug like she’s trying to tell him it’s not a big deal, and maybe it wouldn’t be if it hadn’t been Morgan, if it hadn’t been Mac she’d offered the key to.

Morgan had begged him for a key. She still wasn’t allowed to be home alone, not for more than a few minutes, but she was old enough now, more than old enough to let herself in on weekends when he was in the shower or ensconced on the couch. The key was more symbolic than anything, but she’d been begging for one since her birthday and he’d finally relented, taking her with him to the locksmith to get the key made. Two weeks later she was offering it to Mac. Mac who still lived in fear of upsetting the delicate balance they’d established.

“You told her no.”

“She can’t just give—”

“I’m not disagreeing.” He assures her quietly before she can get going. “I gave her the key, the responsibility, but she isn’t wrong in wanting you to have one.”

“Will.” There’s a warning there, an anxiety he’s doing his best not to ignore.

“You want to make your case?”

She turns to look at him, watch the way he’s leaning back against the top of the chair he’d been occupying, honestly curious.

“Nina—”

“Irrelevant.”

“Will.”

“If Nina had a problem with you, we’d all know it by now. Next point.”

“You can’t just—”

“Dismiss my ex?” He tips his head to meet her eye, “you’re not replacing her.” He says even though that had never been the problem. “Next point.”

“It’s your apartment.”

“Yeah.” She’s looking at him he’s supposed to know that that means, what it’s supposed to mean to him, but he honestly doesn’t have a clue. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

She frowns, waiting for a moment, waiting he thinks for him to figure it out, before turning away toward the bookcase, fingers dusting over the spines lined up on the shelf. “I don’t know.”

“Mac, it’s all right.”

“I,” she starts to turn toward him then reconsiders, “I don’t want to… again.” She picks out the words slowly, pausing to take a deep breath and he sighs.

“It shouldn’t have been twelve years.”

She doesn’t say anything to that. He hadn’t expected her to. It didn’t matter which one of them was worried about what, they weren’t going to fix any of it in the five minutes they had before he had to go and unlock the school doors.

“I don’t mind you stopping by and I don’t mind you asking if you think you need to. I’d,” he straightens, resisting the urge to step toward her, “feel a lot better about it if you had a key, for emergencies and that sort of thing.”

He knows she must think he’s making excuses but she nods when he doesn’t press the issue. It’s not the sort of enthusiasm he’d been hoping for, but it’s enough for now.

*

It’s been a couple of months since he’d dropped a key into her lap after a staff meeting and he’s come to expect to find her in his apartment on the rare day she leaves school before he does, the girls clambering around her or settled down to their homework. It’s been a couple of months so he’s expecting to see her, but not in his kitchen.

“Something smells good.”

He’d left his bag and his shoes at the door, but he drops his sweater onto a chair when Morgan turns to grin at him.

“I’m teaching her, daddy.”

“You are?” He smiles and shakes his head a little chuckling at Mac’s slight shrug. She’d never really been a cook, still wasn’t as far as he knew, but he also knew this wasn’t Mac’s recipe, it was Nina’s, no one else used tuna instead of anchovies in their red sauce: that wasn’t a smell he was prone to forgetting. “Can I help with something?”

“No. Daddy.” Morgan warns him when it looks like he might be considering offering again.

“Maddy was asking for a story earlier.” Mac says by way of suggestion, playing peacekeeper or shooing him he isn’t sure, but he nods and carefully turns away, listening for Morgan’s hushed directions as he heads down the hall to where he knows the other girls must be playing.

*

He waits until after dinner, until after he’s sopped up the last of the sauce with a heel of bread, to raise his eyebrows in Mac’s direction and ask for an explanation. The younger girls are in bed and Morgan’s down the hall brushing her teeth as Mac packs up the last of the papers she’d been grading.

“It was her idea.”

“Spontaneously?” He’s amused by the idea and by the thought that his daughter, beautifully stubborn in her disdain for the domestic arts, would go anywhere near a stove let alone a recipe despite the prodding both he and Nina had provided.

“I may have suggested I was thinking of learning to cook.”

“She offered to join you.”

Mac looks up, amused. “She offered to teach me.”

He shouldn’t be surprised by that, but he is, surprised more by the gall of it than anything else. He should’ve known something like that would work, particularly coming from Mac, although he hadn’t thought to ask for her help despite his mounting frustration.

“I only wanted her to make her own sandwiches.” He shakes his head and Mac shrugs, smiles a little at his amusement.

“I let her pick the recipe.”

“From Nina.” He can hear the judgement in his voice. He knows it didn’t need to be there. If Mac felt all right having a relationship with Nina, in whatever capacity she felt was appropriate, he wasn’t about to step in and police that, particularly since it meant he didn’t have to be the go between, the mediator when something came up with one of the girls.

“It’s what she wanted.” It’s not the apologetic response he’s expecting, the one that asks him to reconsider. There would be no reconsidering, he’d missteped and she wasn’t pleased about it. It wasn’t a tone she normally directed at him, it’s not one she’s ever directed him, not in recent history, but he knows what it is, knows she’s feeling defensive, not for her own sake but for Morgan’s. They’d moved past the point of him airing his petty grievances, not that he’d ever had any, but it’s clear to him now, standing here, that she’s settled into the new role he’d given her without hesitation: whatever she did with the girls after school was as much her call as it was his.

“It’s all right.” He holds up a hand, takes a breath to give her a moment to consider that. “It surprised me, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting, it’s been a long time since I’ve had that dish.”

“I should have,” Mac considers, apologetic now. “I should have warned you.”

“No.” He smiles, offers her that when she doesn’t look convinced. “Neither of you need my permission to make me dinner, to talk to Nina, or whatever else you’re bound to cook up. I wasn’t, I’m not angry, confused I guess.”

He isn’t sure that that covers it, what he’s thinking, feeling, but Mac accepts it with a small smile, a slow nod. 

“OK,” she says, “that’s OK.”

*

She’s sitting at the table, facing him, so when he glances back at her, the last of the dishwater still clinging to his hands, he sees the look on her face, the quiet confusion that shifts to blank uncomprehending horror. He’s not sure he’d recognize the look for anything but disbelief if he hadn’t seen it before, if they hadn’t been arranged just like this all those years ago in the teachers lounge. 

They’d hardly known each other then, she’d just started student teaching, in another class, a different grade than the one he’d been teaching, bouncing around from school to school the way he’d been at the time. It’d been on the TV, the plane, the tower, the ensuing chaos; he’d seen her face when she’d figured out what she was seeing.

This isn’t the same, it’s more personal he knows that, but the numb fear that comes over her looks the same and so he stops, sets the pan on the counter and shakes his head at Morgan when she starts to ask Mac what’s wrong.

“Pick up your homework. Pack a bag.” He tells her and she doesn’t ask any questions, disappearing down the hall to leave the table scattered with her books so he can slip into her seat, reach over to take Mac’s hand, grab her attention.

“He’s in the hospital.” She manages to get the words out without raising her eyes from her phone but he nods anyway, squeezes her fingers with his hand. “St. Francis was closer.”

Hartford he’s pretty sure, but he waits to see if there’s more, if there’s anything else she wants to say, but there doesn’t seem to be anything, not yet.

“I’m going to go pack a bag. Five minutes.” He tells her, gentle and insistent. “Then we’re going to go pack you one.”

He doesn’t mention the train, doesn’t say anything about the schedule. They could catch the train out of Penn Station or Grand Central frequently enough at this time of night that he isn’t worried about that, but she would be.

Morgan always had a bag packed. She was still spending most weekends somewhere else so he isn’t surprised that she’s waiting for him, backpack put back together while he’d thrown a change of clothes and a toothbrush into an old gym bag.

“We’re going to miss the train. Will.” Mac’s looking at him, waiting for him to fix this, still too stuck to realize she doesn’t need to wait on him.

That doesn’t last long, by the time they’re at her place, by the time he’s ushering her into the elevator, asking her for her apartment number, she’s visibly anxious, insisting she could go without him while he reassures her that it’s ok to wait a moment, just a moment. 

It’s harder once they’re in the apartment, once he realizes he doesn’t know where anything is, once he realizes he has to keep her distracted.

“Pack some snacks for Morgan.” He tells her, catching Morgan’s eye behind her back, watching her mouth _for Mac_ while he nods, relieved she’s caught on so he can make his way to the bedroom, find the pajamas Mac had obviously been wearing and throw them onto the bed along with the toothpaste and the contents of the makeup bag he finds scattered across the sink. He can’t find anything to put her toothbrush in but he finds a new one and throws that onto the pile before leaving the bathroom to pull clothes out of the closet, careful to stick to items he remembers from the few weekends she’s spent with them. He doesn’t want to send her out shopping for work clothes, compelled by the memories of the hospital, the smell that would linger long after it was gone.

He packs a black cardigan and black pants, throws in a pair of black flats. They’re versatile enough that he hopes she won’t stop to think about why he’d packed them, about the fact that he’d known she could borrow a shirt from one of her sisters if she needed to. The rest of the clothes are a random assortment, a couple of t-shirts, a white blouse. He finds her jacket, the one she’d worn all winter, warmer than the one she’s wearing now, and decides that’s going to have to be enough.

*

They make it to the station and he sends Mac and Morgan to the platform. There’s enough time that he doesn’t need to worry about that, but it gives Mac something to focus on while he buys the tickets and then joins them, wrapping an arm around Morgan’s shoulders trying to erase some of the tension and worry on her small face.

He’d called Charlie in the cab. He hadn’t offered any details, he hadn’t wanted to with Mac so close, but he had followed up with a text, offered what he could so there’d be some context, some idea of how long he’d be gone although he had no way of knowing.

Nancy had been the one to answer the phone but it’s Charlie on the platform as Will gets up from his seat to see Morgan to the door.

“Daddy, it’s OK.” Morgan shakes her head at him. “Charlie’s right there.”

He was, Will could see him, but he still hesitates, still wants to follow Morgan down the aisle. He’s tense until he sees her step onto the platform and Charlie joins her raising a hand in greeting before turning to grab Morgan’s bag, bending low to hear whatever it is she has to say.

“She’ll be fine.” He says reassuring himself and Mac offers him a smile, reflexive and fleeting before she goes back to fiddling with the zipper on his jacket, the red pull bright enough against the deeper brown fabric to hold her attention.

*

He knows something’s wrong right away. Mac’s too dazed, by the light or the sound or something else entirely he isn’t sure, to realize right away, to notice that the room is empty except for Mary, Mary who the family jokes is a saint, and he knows, knows without realizing it at first that she’d volunteered or been volunteered to break the news to Mac, Mac who’s realized something isn’t right.

“Where’s Sheila?”

“Downstairs.”

This doesn’t make any sense he knows that, but he knows what Mary means: she isn’t here waiting, she’s elsewhere else.

“But,” Mac’s face scrunches up, “he’s out of surgery?”

She doesn’t sound hopeful. There’s a part of her that already knows what’s happened, what Mary’s going to say.

“No,” Mary says softly, “he never made it to—”

“I want to see him. I want—”

“Mac,” he cuts her off before she can get started before hysterical turns into hysterical and loud.

“I want—”

“I know.” He cuts her off again, soothing, “we can talk about—”

“What room—”

He’s had his hands on her arms since they’d walked in and he leans into her now, presses her gently down into a chair so he can sit beside her, lean toward her, keep his voice low. “I’m not going to tell you what you don’t want to hear, but you can’t see him right now, not tonight, but we can make arrangements in the morning. You can see him in the morning.”

“Tomorrow?”

The word cracks around the edges as he nods, holds her hand between both of his.

“Tomorrow.” He promises. “But right now we should get some sleep. I’ll call around and see if I can find a place—”

“You’re staying with me.” It isn’t an offer. Whatever had happened, whenever it had happened, it’d been a while ago; all this had been figured out. Whatever they knew, they’d found out while he and Mac had been on the way up here and they’d waited to tell her, Mary had waited to tell her, had saved her from the futile agony of waiting without hope.

*

He’d gone to sleep on the couch or somewhere else. She knows that even if she can’t remember that, can’t remember how he’d gotten here, asleep on the floor beside the bed, head bent to rest against the side of the mattress. She must have woken up and gone and found him but she doesn’t remember that either, all she could remember was Steven. Steven was gone.

She’d woken up feeling choked, feeling like she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs and she hadn’t been able to remember why not until she’d seen Will, not until she’d seen him asleep next to the bed and remembered that something horrible had happened, because something horrible would have had to happen for him to be there like that, beside the bed, asleep while she sat with her hand pressed into her teeth, trying to breathe through the mess of tears streaming down her face.

Quiet she keeps reminding herself, even though she knows she must not be, even though all she hears is a muted, ringing sort of silence.

“Mac?” He has both eyes open, looking at her, concerned.

“Steve,” she whispers, swallows, and he nods, unfolding to slide onto the bed beside her, wrap his arms around her, hold her while she cried.

*

Morgan’s been clingy, keeping close to Mac, keeping a close eye on Mac. She let him take over during the day when they were both at work, when Morgan he’d insisted had other things to worry about, but in the evenings, during the intervening weekends it’s him with Mac and Morgan and sometimes the younger girls.

He knows Mac sometimes talks with Morgan about Steve, reminisces, runs through the memories she’s clinging to and he leaves them to it, lets Morgan ask questions without any sort of censor on his part. 

It seems to help, Morgan feels like she’s doing something, and Mac, while she often falls asleep with her head on his shoulder watching TV before Morgan’s even gone to bed, doesn’t seem to mind heading home to her own bed, doesn’t seem to be having any trouble sleeping, despite the lingering sadness in her eyes.

“He liked you, you know.” She tells him one warm afternoon. School’s letting out in a couple of weeks, which means they should both be working, but the girls are all at Charlie’s and he’s content to spend the afternoon here with a cup of coffee outside, outside the city, on the back deck of a coffee shop.

“Yeah.” He smiles, knowing who she’s referring to, knowing he doesn’t need to say much.

“He was so pissed I fucked it up.”

That too needs no explanation. She’s stopped saying sorry, stopped with the silent apologies but he answers anyway, knowing this particular part of the exchange has become a sort of habit between them, a checking in: we’re here, we’re really both here. “You were a kid.”

“That doesn’t matter.” She sounds teary now, not dismissive like she normally did, so he pauses to reach over and squeeze her hand where it’s settled next to her coffee cup.

Time he wants to tell her is what he needs but he knows that won’t be a comfort to her not anymore, not when she’s aware of how little time they could have, of how little time they might have. Things were better between them, they had been for a long time now. Things were good but they weren’t like they had been. They couldn’t be, not with the kids and Nina and their jobs, but he’d been planning on sorting it out, figuring it out when he could, whenever that was supposed to be.

*

She doesn’t have to leave, she thinks, maybe, thinks possibly, technically, without the girls here, without a witness, maybe she could stay, stay close with her head on his shoulder, dozing as he flipped through the channels unmoving, unwilling to disturb her.

She could ask, ask to stay, or ask him to hold her, ask him for a lot of things, but she was scared, terrified, not of him saying no, he’d probably say no, he had too many other things to worry about not to say no, but scared that he might say yes, that she might remember what it felt like, not in fleeting half-imagined snatches, but in a visceral way, for a moment. Remember what it had been like, remember and then lose it again, have it taken away.

She’d been less scared before, apprehensive, but understanding, knowing she’d have to wait until he felt comfortable, until he’d figured out how the two of them together fit in with everything else, but now she needed him, needed the way he made her feel like she was keeping things together, keeping herself together.

She needed that but she needed more, wanted more, wanted to feel his arms around her, not in some sort of well meaning hug, but in a way that meant she was safe. She wanted to ask him for that but she wasn’t sure if she could, if she should, even if there wasn’t anyone else here, now, to tell her otherwise.

*

She’d fallen asleep on the couch and he’d left her there, covered her with a blanket and tucked a pillow under her head. Usually he made a made a production out of getting up, jostling her so she woke just enough to decide she should be heading home, but he didn’t need to. It’d only taken a couple of months and a tiny baby to teach him to move more carefully, more deliberately, to move without causing a stir and so tonight he’d slipped off the couch and left her sleeping, left the TV on all but muted and left her to her dreams.

*

She’s groggy and disoriented when she wakes in the predawn gloom, stumbling through the apartment that feels too much like her own to the door he’d left cracked. Inside she knows he’s still asleep. He’d always been reluctant to wake, reticent about the arrival of the morning so she leaves him be, slides down the wall and sits with her head resting against the door frame.

When she wakes again it’s in bed, but not her bed. He must have moved her here, picked her up and tucked her in because she knows she wouldn’t have asked, wouldn’t have dared to ask and she wonders why he’d bothered. She couldn’t have slept that long, here or in the hall, but he hadn’t woken her, this morning or last night and she wonders what that means.

It’s a nice bed, nicer than she’d expected given how careful she knows he is about his money, the salary he’s still stretching despite the lack of school tuition payments. She stretches, burrowing deeper for a moment and then sighs, forcing herself to get up. It was Sunday, there was a chance the girls would be back soon, she never could predict Nina’s schedule, and she didn’t want to complicate things, didn’t want Will to have to explain to Nina or the girls what was going on, not when she wasn’t sure either of them really knew.

“Hey.” Will’s at the table, smiling at her as she stops in the door, wrapping herself in the blanket she’d taken from the foot of the bed. “There’s coffee, unless you want to catch more sleep.”

Normal. It all feels so normal, familiar in a way that makes her wonder if she’s still sleeping, because this was Will, but not the Will she’s come to know in the last couple of years, the Will who worried over socks lost in the dryer and peanut butter spread to thickly on sandwiches.

“I have four and a half hours until I have to be dad Will.” He says as if he’s read her mind. “Any suggestions as to how I spend it?”

Ball’s in your court, that’s what he means. Normally that would make her panic, the thought that she could mess things up again, lose not just him but the girls too, but this morning it only makes her smile, shy and uncertain, but it’s a smile nonetheless, one that brightens his face too.

“Pancakes and cartoons, a race along the water, laundry.” He stops when she feels her forehead wrinkle in confusion. “It’s hard to be serious when you’re so,” he reaches up to pat his head and she lays a hand on her own, smoothes down the hair that had been sticking up.

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “I may have helped it along a bit.”

She doesn’t know what to make of that, of the thought that he might have tousled her hair while she slept like he did to the girls, messing it up instead of smoothing it down, a reminder that he’d been there, that he loved them. She stills her hand and drops it to her side. “Could we have breakfast?”

“We can start there.” He agrees and she expects to feel herself smile but she’s already smiling, still smiling, so she nods, steps a little closer.

“Can I help?”

“Can you set the table?”

She shrugs and he smiles.

*

He’s still smiling as she polishes off another piece of toast, grabbing the last slice from the plate they’re sharing.

“I should go.”

He shakes his head, hoping to put her off. “Stay awhile. The girls won’t be back if you’re worried.” He softens the last couple of words but doesn’t linger over them. “I like having you here.”

“I know.” She says surprising him with her candor. “And I like— it’s nice.”

“But?”

“No,” she shakes her head, “no but. It’s nice.”

He waits watching her draw in her bottom lip, the last slice of toast still held before her. “It’s— I,” she sighs and he nods.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“You mentioned the water?” She tugs on the thread, his suggestion, uses it as a lifeline. She’s more awake now, less groggy and more confused. He thinks maybe he shouldn’t have tucked her into his bed after he’d gotten up, folding the blankets back up over her sleep heavy shoulders and under her chin.

He’d liked the sight of her there, had wondered over the image of it, hazy in his memory, for weeks now. He’d considered suggesting she have a sleepover of sorts with the girls, a sort of half compromise with himself, but then she’d fallen asleep last night and he’d run out of excuses to wake her up. When she hadn’t left, when he’d found her outside his door it’d been all he could do not to stay and watch her sleep.

“We could go for a walk, talk for a bit.” He suggests, watching a smile bloom across her face.

“Morgan says that’s romantic.”

She’s teasing, he know that, but he’s still serious, just for a moment asking, “do you agree? Do you think her old man’s a romantic?”

“Just because we share a name.” She’s protesting but it’s only because she can, because she’s wondering how far she can push it, push this newly discovered freedom of hers because she really hadn’t seen it before, he’s realized that now.

“All right then.” He’s teasing now too, taking up the challenge. “It’s a hard sell but I think we could rustle up a picnic.”

“And candles.” She bites back a laugh and he shakes his head, pausing for a second to contain his own smile.

“There’s a bottle of wine in the back of the closet.”

“There isn’t.” She sounds so sure of herself that he has to chuckle before shaking his head.

“There will be by the time you’re done with me.”


End file.
